Joely Richardson admits she struggled to find an agent after moving back to UK following sister's death and reveals she's single again at 59 after a string of 'heartbreaks'

Joely Richardson admitted she struggled to find an agent after moving back to the UK following her sister Natasha's death and has revealed she is single again aged 59 following a string of 'heartbreaks'.

Joely sister tragically died in March 2009 when she was aged just 45, after hitting her head in a fall on a ski slope in Canada. 

After that news, Joely chose theatre over television, partly to be close to her nephews, Natasha’s sons with her husband, Liam Neeson, who were only 12 and 13, when their mother died. (The oldest, Micheál Richardson, is now an actor himself.)

She told Tatler: 'It wasn’t a wise choice career-wise to go from mainstream television to doing sort of off-off-Broadway theatre, but that was the stuff I most wanted to do then.’

After a few years, she decided to regroup in England. She said: ‘After 30 years, I just thought, “Oh God, I don’t want to be going into work and crying my eyes out and, you know, doing high drama. I’m quite happy to park all that for a bit.” 

Joely Richardson told Tatler she struggled to find an agent after moving back to the UK following her sister Natasha's death in 2009 - and reveals she's single again at 59 after a string of 'heartbreaks'

She posed on the cover wearing an elaborate mint green ballgown as she spoke about her single love life status

She said‘I never talk about my love life, which over the years might have given the impression of not having one. I’ve had a colourful and adventurous time, but have not yet been able to sign on the dotted line since my first marriage.

She said of marriage: 'I’ve been asked, but it just never felt right. I was seeing someone for the last few years but we split last summer'

'But breaking into the English market was… it’s ironic because a lot of the companies are American, but it was very difficult,’ she laughs. 

‘I did lots of much smaller roles to keep working, because I didn’t want to be away from home and loved ones for months on end any more.’

Joely admits that she initially she found it hard to get a new agent in London but she connected with [her now agent] Sue Latimer immediately and underwent ‘something of a reinvention’. 

She said: ‘I started to just get a little foot in the door, like Suspect, with Jimmy Nesbitt, and then Mrs Bolton, which was random. But I had a wonderful time, and things started to get easier. So it’s weird that sometimes the back step is actually the thing that [made] casting directors want to hire me again.’

She admits she had had a run of funerals around that time, and ‘I didn’t know that’s what I was doing… it’s called “soldier mode”, where you carry on but something’s not right. 

'I was permanently on alert and I worked off cortisol energy for a long time anyway, even before that. It’s not good. It has no shelf life and it’s an exhausting way to live.' 

And while Joely likes to keep her cards close to her chest when it comes to her private life, she confirms that she doesn't have a partner at the moment. 

She dated the Evening Standard’s proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev – in 2020 – but says:  ‘I never talk about my love life, which over the years might have given the impression of not having one. I’ve had a colourful and adventurous time, but have not yet been able to sign on the dotted line since my first marriage. 

'I’ve been asked, but it just never felt right. I was seeing someone for the last few years but we split last summer.’

Joely has a daughter, Daisy, 31, with her now ex-husband Tim Bevan. 

Daisy lives in London but Joely says she is ‘the one thing that I just don’t want to talk about, but does say: 'she’s the most fabulous, wise and inspirational person that I know.’ 

'Tash in all her glory!' Joely previously shared this stunning image of her late sister Natasha with widower Liam Neeson, 70

Heartbroken: Joely previously told Tatler: 'I hadn't lived a day in my life without her... The shock shatters you on a cellular level' (Pictured together in 1988)

The daughter of the actress Vanessa Redgrave, 87, and the late director Tony Richardson, Joely appears in Netflix hit One Day, Guy Ritchie's The Gentleman and is about to star in Renegade Nell. 

It's an eight part series written by Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack writer Sally Wainwright for Disney+

Joely is full of praise for her Renegade Nell co-star Harland, who made her name in Channel 4’s Derry Girls.

She said: 'I knew instantly with Louisa that she’s the real deal. The dialogue on the page is quite tricky stuff, very quippy. Obviously the scripts are brilliant, but it’s not as easy as it looks.

'You wouldn’t know it because everyone has such a light touch, but that stuff can go very wrong because you’ve got to get the exact twist and wit. She was funny and charming and it all trickles down from the top. 

'She absolutely carries Renegade Nell.’ After four decades of acting – she started working professionally at 19 – and with all that world in her genes, Joely can recognise the ‘real deal’ because ‘it’s just something you notice, like builders who have been doing things for a long time’.

Joely has been on the cover of Tatler twice before; in 1991, as a young actress modelling the designs of Catherine Walker, and in 2010, on set in Ireland for The Tudors, dressed in Dior. 

The 2010 Tatler cover shoot wasn’t long after Tash’s death.

Acclaimed actress Vanessa Redgrave receiving her damehood from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in 2022

Family support: Dame Vanessa Redgrave (second right) alongside (L-R) daughter Joely, son Carlos Nero and his wife Jennifer Nero

Joely chose theatre over television, partly to be close to her nephews, Natasha’s sons with her husband, Liam Neeson , who were only 12 and 13, when their mother died. The oldest, Micheál Richardson, is now an actor himself - pictured at the Somewhere Quiet premiere in 2023 

Joely brands her parents two brilliant individuals. When her Yorkshire-born, bisexual father died of Aids-related complications in 1991, she lost the person she would always ask for advice (pictured in 1988) 

She said: ‘There were a couple of years before I descended from the shock.'

Adding: ‘They say the Earth was made round so you couldn’t see too far ahead. [After that event], I changed and moved away from a lot of nonsense and got involved with things that mattered to me: the charities I work with [Save the Children; The Children’s Trust]. I travelled to Uganda, Ethiopia, hospitals, schools, refugee camps. I became much more family-oriented and had more responsibilities.’ 

Now she lives in a flat near Paddington – much renovated during the actors’ strike – and a house in the country. In both places, she is a walker: ‘I am most relaxed on a long dog walk in the countryside or getting lost in my garden,’ she says. 

She also still loves tennis and has joined a club. ‘[It’s] more fun than the gym. On set you have to maintain the same weight over a six-month period and I absolutely can’t eat anything I want now.’ 

Joely brands her parents two brilliant individuals. When her Yorkshire-born, bisexual father died of Aids-related complications in 1991, she lost the person she would always ask for advice.

As Lady Eularia Moggerhanger makes her debut in Renegade Nell, Joely is delighted with her new phase. ‘There’s a gravestone near my grandma’s that says “grit and grace” and I resonate with that, but honestly, mine would just say “thank you” (pictured in Renegade Nell)

Joely Richardson and Tim Bevan during the Four Weddings And A Funeral premiere in 1994 -  no one else has got her to sign on the dotted line when it comes to remarrying 

She said: ‘I would say, “Should I do this job?” He would say, “Work breeds work, so just do it.” But he was tricky. And naughty – he encouraged quite wild behaviour, and he was quite a hard taskmaster for me and Tash when we went into the profession.’ 

As for her mother: ‘We love each other enormously and spend an awful lot of time together. We talk about everything and also drive each other mad in the way that mothers and daughters do.’ 

At the moment, Joely is shooting season two of Surface, the Apple TV+ thriller. ‘I think it’s funny that I perhaps have got to a stage where playing characters is more interesting to me… Maybe I was always a character actor that didn’t know it,’ she says. 

As Lady Eularia Moggerhanger makes her debut in Renegade Nell, Joely is delighted with her new phase. ‘There’s a gravestone near my grandma’s that says “grit and grace” and I resonate with that, but honestly, mine would just say “thank you”.

'I feel very lucky in my life. I’ve had big heartbreaks, like most people, but I have big love in my life – I feel loved and I love back.’ 

Renegade Nell will be available on Disney+ from 29 March 

See the full feature in the April issue of Tatler available via digital download and on newsstands from Thursday 29 February. 

This article was first published in the April 2024 issue, on sale Thursday 29 February